語源は不明。ギルド（guild）、支払い（payment）、払い出し（dispursement）から来ている可能性がある。pay a fine（罰金を払う）、atone for a crime（罪を償う）が語源。
英語の語源
guilt
guilt: [OE] Guilt is a strictly English word; no other Germanic, or indeed Indo-European language has it, and it is not clear where it came from. One theory is that, like guild and yield, it comes ultimately from Germanic *gelth- ‘pay’, and originally meant ‘debt’. This is not generally accepted, but it is notable that the German word schuld means ‘debt’ as well as ‘guilt’, with ‘debt’ being the original sense.
guilt (n.)
Old English gylt "crime, sin, moral defect, failure of duty," of unknown origin, though some suspect a connection to Old English gieldan "to pay for, debt," but OED editors find this "inadmissible phonologically." The -u- is an unetymological insertion. In law, "That state of a moral agent which results from his commission of a crime or an offense wilfully or by consent" [Century Dictionary], from early 14c. Then use for "sense of guilt," considered erroneous by purists, is first recorded 1680s. Guilt by association recorded by 1919.
guilt (v.)
"to influence someone by appealing to his sense of guiltiness," by 1995, from guilt (n.). Related: Guilted; guilting. Old English also had a verbal form, gyltan (Middle English gilt), but it was intransitive and meant "to commit an offense, act criminally."
例文
1. The drinking and the guilt fed on each other.
飲酒と犯罪は互いに助長されている。
2.His creative drive has been strangled by his sense of political guilt .
彼の創造意欲は彼の政治的罪悪感によって殺された。
3.Too many women are like me， guilt ridden about the kids.
多くの女性は私のように、子供に罪悪感を抱いています。
4.She wanted some admission of guilt from her father.
彼女は彼女の父親が罪を認めることを期待している。
5.I was too weighed down by guilt to eat the sweet.